I was an early Champions Online player, participated in the beta and subscribed for a few months after launch. Eventually I decided that, while the game was fun, it didn't have the content or scope to warrant its $15/month subscription. I let my subscription lapse long ago.

Yesterday, the game went free to play. That caught my interest. I read the patch notes and reinstalled. Unfortunately, while this might draw in some new players, I don't think it'll be getting any lapsed subscribers to keep playing. And the reason for that is that the free mode (Cryptic take a leaf out of MS's book and call the free level Silver and paid Gold) removes nearly all of what makes the game unique, fun, or otherwise appealing. Which again comes back around to the lack of content.

There's not any real CONTENT to hold back from Silver players, so Cryptic was forced to hold back FEATURES instead. Features like free-form character creation (until now, there were never any classes in Champions, just hero archetypes from which you can mix and match powers to suit your design). Instead, Silver players are locked into premade archetypes. But even those are not all available for free. Some of the more interesting ones must be unlocked via one-time "microtransactions." Lots of other content is also restricted by microtransaction lockouts, ranging from appearance items to new zones.

I don't think Cryptic quite understand WHY their game didn't work with paid subs. Making it free but stripping features doesn't solve that problem, even if it does create a new area of appeal. I think a far better solution would have been to reduce the subscription cost. You can currently still subscribe for $15/month, and get access to freeform character building and a bunch of other stuff. But the game's lack of CONTENT still remains despite the full featureset.
The game's other big problem (the ultra-low-population instanced shard system) also still remains. This latter problem keeps Champions from ever feeling like an MMO. While you may be "online with" hundreds or thousands of players, you only ever actually coexist with around 20. You end up with much more of a singleplayer-feeling experience which just doesn't lend itself to the monthly subscription model.

Even worse, the silver/gold transition is really clunky, so people like me with existing gold characters get screwed pretty hard. You have to "convert" (should be called "downgrade") your Gold characters to Silver compatible archetypes in order to play with a Silver account. So if you buy the game ($10 retail right now) and build a fun character, but don't renew after your free month, you're most likely going to find yourself playing a whole new character after that point.

I'm pretty disappointed in the whole deal. I like Champions, and I'd love to play it more. But I have a hard enough time paying monthly for WoW, which offers a thousand times the content and polish along with real MMO server populations. And stripping MORE off the menu is not the way to INCREASE appeal for Champions, even if it comes with no pricetag--and even moreso when what's being stripped away is what makes the game worth notice in the first place.

So Fail, Cryptic Studios. Fail. Balls to you. I might have returned to the game, but locked archetypes and rampant microtransaction lockouts make the free mode even less appealing than the paid mode.

Drop the monthly sub price to ~$7 with full features and I'd consider coming back.